that might contain only a single stall huddled around the small yards. Forty-seven such smaller terminals existed within the CPR network in Alberta and Saskatchewan alone.
During steam days, a train might spend an hour at a divisional station while the engine was watered, coaled, and otherwise tended to. To cater to impatient passengers, the railways instituted restaurants.
Some were housed in a separate building occasionally attached to the station by a walkway, others were located in the station themselves. These early structures were at first simple two-storey buildings and might contain sleeping quarters for the crew, in addition to a restaurant. Later on, stations added lunch counters right in the station building itself, and the separate restaurant building eventually disappeared from the station landscape. At the divisional point of Fort Frances, Ontario, the Canadian Northern’s original turreted wooden station was moved a few yards away and became a restaurant when the railway replaced it with a larger brick station. In Temagami, Ontario, the original station became a restaurant following the erection of a new, more elaborate Tudoresque stone station.
Patrons enjoy a meal in the CPR divisional station restaurant at Smiths Falls, Ontario. Photo courtesy of CP Archives, 25655.
In smaller communities the railways would contract out the lunch service to a local hotel or café. The Grand Trunk station at Kingston went further and, according to an advertisement, offered this added feature: “Passengers going east or west by the night trains may avoid much unpleasant inconvenience arising from being disturbed at unreasonable hours by driving to the railway station early in the evening where they can obtain comfortable bedrooms and an undisturbed sleep till the hour of departure for the train.”
Then, as snack bar service was introduced right in the coaches, providing the long-awaited inexpensive alternative to the dining cars, as diesel replaced steam and eliminated the need for lengthy stops at divisional points, the lunchrooms were closed and the space converted to offices for divisional staff.
At Cartier, Ontario, the large wooden CPR station contained the restaurant right in the building, a restaurant that later became the roadmaster’s office. At Orangeville, the original separate restaurant building was converted to crew quarters and later became the “station” for a new short-line operation. The original station itself was relocated and was converted into a restaurant. Far to the north in Cochrane, Ontario, the much altered CN/ONR station has been expanded to include not only a larger restaurant, but a motel and ticket office for passengers awaiting the departure of the ONR’s Polar Bear Express to Moosonee, or the Northlander to Toronto.
Next up the pyramid were the regional headquarters. More wide-ranging in function than divisional stations, these housed the railway bureaucracy. To administer the complicated business of running a railway, they divided the country into regions, each with its own headquarters. Station plans were often devised in the regional headquarters. Here, too, executives huddled in panelled boardrooms while department heads tallied statistics for the year.
While stations were usually part of the headquarters building, they were secondary at best. The CPR’s Windsor Station in Montreal, originally the national head office, the Algoma Central’s Bruce Street in Sault Ste Marie, and the Newfoundland Railway’s St. John’s terminal are all examples of station/headquarters. By contrast, the handsome limestone head office of the Ontario Northland Railway in North Bay never contained a station, the railway sharing a station with CN elsewhere in town.
Many divisional yards remain in use across Canada, as do their historic divisional stations. Although in many cases those functions have been reduced, or ceased, these stations still stand in places like Senneterre in Quebec, Schreiber, Kenora, and Thunder Bay (Fort William CP) in Ontario, and Wynyard, Humboldt, and Wainwright in Saskatchewan. In other instances, while the yards remain, the histrionic stations no longer survive, having been replaced with newer structures.
Special Stations
Commuter Stations
The success of Ontario’s GO commuter system and Montreal’s SCTUM are really nothing new. More prevalent in the United States, where urban sprawl had despoiled the landscape even in the 1860s, commuter stations began to appear in Canada toward the end of the nineteenth century. In Fredericton, New Brunswick, workers would cluster in the pre-dawn at the Queen Street station to board the train that would take them to the mills at Marysville. At 8:30 a.m. the same train would return to Fredericton filled with restless students for the high school.
TOP: One of Toronto’s suburban stations was this delightful station at Davenport. Photo courtesy of City of Toronto archives, Salmon, 1057A. BOTTOM: In 1913 the Toronto Belt Line’s commuter station at Moore Park reflected the upscale neighbourhood that surrounded it. The line lasted only months. Photo courtesy of the Metro Toronto Reference Library, T 12185.
During the 1880s and 1890s, when Montreal was becoming a booming port, commuter lines radiated out from the city, north to suburbs like Mount Royal and Roxboro, and west to places like Westmount, Beaconsfield, Valois, and Pointe-Claire.
Suburban lines were initially less successful around Toronto — one was a failure nearly from the day it commenced operations. In 1888, a group of Toronto land speculators, anxious to encourage a housing boom around the city, built the Toronto Beltline Railway. Large, elaborate stations were built at Moore Park and Lambton Mills while smaller structures appeared in Forest Hill beside Bathurst Street, at Fairbanks beside Dufferin Street, at Lambton Mills near Scarlet Road, and at Rosedale in the Don Valley. Rather than radiate from the core of the city, the line ignored commuting patterns and encircled it. It failed within two years and was leased to the Grand Trunk for freight operation. Short sections continued as CN freight stubs until the 1970s. Of the six stations, none have survived and only three — Moore Park, Lambton Mills, and Davenport (Bathurst Street) — were even photographed. Moore Park burned following the Second World War, Rosedale burned around the same time, while the station at Lambton Mills stood as a residence until the 1960s.
The early CNR industrial station at Leaside is now privately owned. Photo by author.
Like Montreal, a number of Toronto’s main line stations served double duty as commuter stations. Those at Main Street (known as York), Riverdale, St. Clair, Sunnyside, Davenport, two at West Toronto, and two at Parkdale, all served this function.
A brief commuter service on Vancouver Island once shuttled wealthy lakeside residents from Shawinigan Lake into Victoria to work, but the service was dropped in 1907.
The early Great Western station at Niagara Falls holds an Amtrak train for its customs inspection while a VIA train waits to head back to Toronto. Photo by author.
Industrial Stations
Although fewer in number than commuter stations, another form of special station was the industrial station. These were never intended to be passenger stations, nor did they offer the range of functions of the way stations. They were intended purely to control the heavy rail traffic in and out of industrial complexes.
The Clarabelle station near Sudbury was one. Originally a way station on the Algoma Eastern Railway, it became an industrial station
